Photoelectricity and thermoelectricity in organic chlorophyll phototransistors

Abstract As one kind of organic semiconductor materials, Chlorophyll has been attracted great attention with remarkable optical properties. Here, we demonstrate photoresponse and thermoelectric current in the biological Chlorophyll A field effect phototransistors (FEpTs). Meanwhile, it exhibits excellent performances including high responsivity (5 × 10 3 A/W) and relatively fast response time (rise time ∼ 20.3 s, fall time ∼ 28.2 s) under illumination by 405 nm. Utilizing thermionic emission theory and typical Arrehenius plot, Schottky barrier Φ B is found to be 76.6 meV. The biological phototransistor via low-cost, simple, and scalable fabrication processes opens up new opportunities to realize flexible, transparent organic electronic, and biologically optoelectronic devices.